My Favorite Hobby Is Stalking Celeb Venmos

My Favorite New Hobby Is Stalking Celebrities' Venmos

In case you were wondering if your favorite celebrities (and pseudo-celebrities) use Venmo, the answer is yes. If your follow-up question is "Can I see their account transactions?" — the answer is, surprisingly, yes again. And that is the introduction to what I did for two hours last night in my dimly lit living room: I stalked a bunch of celebrities on Venmo to see who they hang out with and what clever Venmo captions they come up with. And damn guys, they definitely have no idea we can see their information. While it is a little creepy (and of course I do not condone actual stalking) there isn't that big of a difference between this and trolling Instagram to see if Selena Gomez finally unfollowed Bella Hadid. (It's all public.)

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It all started how a lot of good stories start — in a Facebook group called Who? Weekly that you shouldn't join because it is my online safe space for weird celebrity content, but I just need to shout them out.

A member of the fam, a Wholigan, shared a screenshot showing that Sofia Richie (ex of Justin Bieber, friend of the Jenners, daughter of Lionel Richie, sister of Nicole Richie) paid Kyle Massey (of That's So Raven fame) on the app, adding "Miss you." He responded: "Miss you more

This post caught my attention because it reminded me of the Sean Spicer Venmo phenomenon from earlier this year (also thanks to the Wholigans), and made me realize just how easy it is to see if your favorite reality star or TV series regular is using the app to pay their friends back for a night out or splitting queso during happy hour.

And you know what? They are.

I simply opened up my own Venmo account, typed in 'Sofia Richie' and went to work. I clicked 'Friends' on her page and lo and behold, all of the youth of Hollywood was there. You see, Venmo taps into your contact list and is automatically set to public unless you manually change the setting to private. I had opened Pandora's box.

And it all went downhill from there. Or uphill, if you're like me and just love knowing who actually hangs out in Hollywood and what celebs do in their spare time. It turns out that SO many celebrities use Venmo (just like us!) and it's really, really easy to find them. Within seconds I had spotted both Anwar Hadid and Bella Thorne's names in Richie's recent transactions. I clicked each of theirs. Thorne pays her sister back a lot and also received a few payments from fans applauding her for being a voice for bisexual girls everywhere, as one user wrote. From there I clicked Hadid's, which led me to his girlfriend Nicola Peltz's, who recently dined at the Los Angeles hot spot, Catch. That's also around the time that I noticed an odd name pop up again and again on each of these lists: Bella Poop Head. I am 98% sure that "Bella Poop Head" is none other than Bella Hadid, under a pseudonym (Olivia Perez is her bestie). She hasn't used it recently but appears to have gone to see a movie in April and paid her friend back for lots of popcorn. #Relatable.

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Then there's actor Patrick Schwarzenegger (son of The Terminator), whose guy friend paid him back for "Soulllll cycle lol" last October, and model Emily Ratajkowski who uses a real picture of herself as her image, but hasn't yet used the app. The Pretty Little Liars cast also has their money sharing app set to public, with Ashley Benson paying Troian Bellisario back for Bellisario's bridal shower trip to Italy (which looked like a super fun time). The Hadids led me to the Foster sisters (their step-siblings) who led me to Benson, who led me to Tallulah Willis (Bruce Willis and Demi Moore's daughter), who led me to Lola Kirke (star of Mozart in the Jungle and younger sister to Girls' Jemma Kirke) and the hours just flew by. I'm also pretty sure I found Nick Viall's, but it was relatively boring and confusing because he wasn't friends with any other Bachelor people. Unfortunately I wasn't able to ever locate Justin Bieber's.